You took the words right out of my mouth. Since US is in such desperate need for widebody, long range capacity, they should pick these babies up so that they can finally have some metal for there PHL-PEK flight, instead of blaming everyone else for there shortfalls on obtaining the adequate aircraft for that route.

Quoting Curious (Reply 12):They are listed as being available for wet-lease not sale? besides arent these aircraft still on the EU ban register? will that mean that they cant fly to EU even under other airline?

Ok, I didnt browse the site for deatils, 747 for SALE and SELLER information/contact was enough to make me think they were going.

To use a Texasism, those PK birds have been rode hard and put away wet... year after year for many, many years. Maybe some maybe some 3rd rate Kalitta knock-off would have use for them as freight dogs in the 3rd world somewhere? Other than that I'm guessing they will sit for a long time, be parted out, and turned into engine blocks for new sports cars.

Seeing that Thai´s duo of 743s, younger aicraft than the PIA 743s (with the exception of the late-built AP-BGG), have reportedly been sold for parting out, I don´t see much chance for the PIA birds. I wonder why PIA does not fly them 2 or 3 years longer when they´ve come to the point of retierment cycle-wise.
As someone said before, the only chance I see for them is that one of the Hadj-operators take them, like Kabo Air or Garuda.

Transaero might well relatively soon retire the 742s which all have clocked 1000000 hours and more, the "magic" number 747s around which usually are retired. But as fleet expansion they have got some ex-JAL 743s (two delivered so far) and apparently the RR-powered SAA 744s will be going to Transaero (1 already delivered, and if it would remain just one would be very odd).

the electronics throughout are different (lighting, etc), ovens etc only have minimal or no power until after engine start, even the phones are different! Toilets use the old blue liquid flush rather than the high power vacuum flush. Whilst some -300 had new engines (it looks like these birds do have them), most -300 had older engines (easy to tell unpainted) that weren't as efficient and couldn't operate at as high an altitude (not as much thrust but also winglets on -400 help reduce drag).
Engineer is a biggie these days as pretty much the 743 and a small group of other aircraft are the only aircraft in pax commerical service that still use engineers... flight engineers are therefore now hard to comeby and are very expensive for airlines.

56 types. 38 countries. 24 airlines.

25 777way
: Two of these are said to be going to new Philippine startup www.tairairways.com to operate flights to Saudi Arabia.

26 KHI747
: So does this leave PIA with 3 B743's or 4? Have these planes been grounded for a while or have they been in service until now? The B743's,ever since t

27 Imiakhtar
: http://youtube.com/watch?v=za6V_NzBXLg Sorry, couldn't find any pics. Flew on one a few years ago from MAN and its interior was in good nic. Most of

28 Lightsaber
: Wow. I thought these would be prime candidates as beer cans. Good to see they'll see a bit more service. But for how many years? With oil above $100/

29 KHI747
: Yes i agree it sounds strange but then again planning is something PIA dont waste their time with.No one knows the answer to the question why are the

30 A380BWI
: Apparently kickbacks and commissions have been made on the deals accustomed to the PK culture. And now when they are upto the EU standards maintenanc

31 Curious
: What about the 300's in other airlines? are they still kepping them or is anyone else also offloading their 300's?

32 NA
: Current notable 747-300 operators besides PIA: JAL - currently being replaced by 773ERs SV - all active, but retirement has been announced, maybe the

33 Scouseflyer
: Am I wrong in thinking that the -400 has a longer upper desk than the -300?